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President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would not give up on his new Acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, when he was trying to prevent Special Investigator Robert's investigation. Mueller on the Trump-Russia scandal.
"It will be up to him to decide," Trump said during his appearance in "Fox News Sunday," according to Politico. "I will not participate."
Although the President insisted that he was not aware of Whitaker's strong opposition to research before naming him and that "I do not think it had an impact" on his decision to choose Whitaker to replace the Attorney General of the time, Jeff Sessions. Trump also made it known that he understood Whitaker's point of view.
"What do you do when a person is right? There is no collusion. He was right," Trump told Fox News Sunday.
Trump's decision to appoint Whitaker has been severely criticized for a number of reasons. The most important of these is the long history of Whitaker in his attempt to discredit the Mueller probe, which he is supposed to impartially oversee as head of the justice department. In July 2017, Whitaker told CNN: "I saw a scenario in which Jeff Sessions would be replaced by a suspension appointment, and that the Attorney General would not fire Bob Mueller, but that he would reduce his budget to one. so low that his investigation has almost halted, "according to the Washington Post. In the same year, he called Mueller's appointment "ridiculous" and "a little suspicious". On other occasions, he asserted that Mueller should not look into Trump's finances and that key Trump campaign leaders were not wrong to meet a Kremlin lawyer for greeting Hillary. Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, because "if you have someone you trust, that means you have to meet that person because she has information about your opponent you are taking this meeting. "
It's not just the Democrats who have criticized Trump's appointment of Whitaker. An announcement urging Whitaker to recuse himself from the Mueller probe began airing last week (including at one of Trump's favorite shows, "Fox & Friends"), thanks to a group called Republicans for the Rule of Law. This group is part of the broader Defending Democracy Together organization that was co-founded by renowned Republicans, including commentator Bill Kristol, and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News personality and long-time friend with Trump, told Salon that he was in favor of a lawsuit by the state of Maryland, claiming that Whitaker's appointment was illegal. This has been another common criticism of Trump's appointment of Whitaker since his first announcement.
"Two laws govern who can lead the Ministry of Justice," Napolitano told Salon. "A general law that applies to people who can head the main department of a government when there is a vacancy at the head of that department, such as the secretary of state. , the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense, and that there is a specific law applying only Thus, traditional judicial analysis when two laws conflict – one, one general and the other, is specific – is to apply the particular.In fact, the general even refers to the existence of specificities since the general, the Vacancy Act, came after the specific. "
He added: "All this means, in my opinion, that any judicial mind examining the circumstances of Mr. Whitaker's appointment would find that it is illegal because it does not comply with the specific law, which requires that the DOJ official – I do not speak of any other department, but of the DOJ – he must have been appointed by the president, which was confirmed by the Senate at the time of their appointment, because of the authority You can say, "The secretary of defense has extraordinary authority, he kills people." Yes, he does, but he can not fire without the permission of the president, who does not have the authority to do so. There is no need for the prosecutor's authorization to open a criminal investigation, direct the FBI or put an end to a criminal investigation.The Congress has requested confirmation from the Senate because it wishes to know the legal thinking of the human being who will lead the MJ.C is t rop of power, wrote Congress – not me – put it in the hands of an untested and unexamined person – Mr. Whitaker is. By untested and un-examined, I mean unverified and not examined by the rigors of the confirmation process by the Senate. "
Matthew Rozsa
Matthew Rozsa is an author of breaking news for Salon. He holds a Masters degree in History from Rutgers University-Newark and holds a Ph.D. in History from Lehigh University. His work has been published in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
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